Cain & Cain Bailey Subwoofer Reviews...
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Reviewer: Srajan Ebaen
Source: Audio Aero Prima SE; Accustic Arts Drive-1; Eastern Electric Mini Max CDP
Preamp/Integrated: Eastern Electric Mini Max; Eastern Electric M520 [on review]; Onix/Melody SP3 [on review]
Amp: Eastern Electric Mini Max; First Watt F1 [on extended loan]
Speakers: Cain & Cain Abby and Bailey [on review]
Cables: Crystal Cable Reference complete wire set of analog and digital interconnects, speaker cables and power cords; Z-Cable Reference Cyclone power cords on both powerline conditioner; 2 x Stealth Audio Cables Indra analogue & Sextet S/PDIF cable
Stands: 2 x Grand Prix Audio Monaco four-tier
Powerline conditioning: 2 x Walker Audio Velocitor S]
Sundry accessories: GPA Formula Carbon/Kevlar shelf for tube amps; GPA Apex footers underneath stand and speakers; Walker Audio SST on all connections; Walker Audio Vivid CD cleaner; Furutech RD-2 CD demagnetizer; World Power cryo'd Hubbell and Iso Clean wall sockets; Musse Audio resonance dampers on DUO subs
Room size: 30' w x 18' d x 10' h [sloping ceiling] in long-wall setup in one half, with open adjoining living room for a total of ca.1000 sq ft floor plan and significant 'active' cubic air volume of essentially the entire (small) house.
If you're on a working man's budget and in an average-sized listening space, Terry Cain's 70" tall but skinny Abby in solid Alder wood is arguably his best speaker despite being priced as his entry-level offering. Serious punters might thus overlook it. Too bad for them.
To make this good thing better yet, Terry designed the Bailey subwoofer specifically to complement the Abby -- and higher-priced entries in the Cain & Cain stable -- both in appearance and performance. The former means furniture-type cosmetics with the Studio Series base to match every model across the line. The latter means speed and energy, the two hallmarks of single-driver crossover-less speakers. Because the 1/4-wave Voight pipe Abby only uses a whizzer-fitted Fostex F166E of a mere 4.5" cone diameter (rimmed with an inverted foam surround for a total diameter of 5.5"), its bass extension and displacement are necessarily limited.
While larger Cain & Cain models employ costlier Fostex drivers and grow the lengths of their backloaded horns to increase LF performance -- to the detriment of size and cost, naturally -- the Abby/Bailey combo remains much less than the single-horn I-Ben, the next model up. Regardless, the 3-piece combo will positively destroy the dearer model in terms of bass sock and reach. Once you factor in how a sub/sat approach allows separate placement of the mains for best imaging and that of the sub for best bass/room integration, you might rightly wonder why anyone would aspire to spend considerably more to get less. Well, you'd certainly assume advances in refinement and perhaps overall linearity (and the ability to play larger spaces and higher volumes) but where all-'round real-world performance goes, the Abby/Bailey threesome surely rules the Cain & Cain roost.
"Not pretending to reinvent bass technology or to add anything other than precise craftsmanship", the Bailey uses a Seas 10" aluminum woofer. It loads sideways into a front-ported Birch Ply enclosure but the owner is free to experiment with all manner of other orientations to serve decor and performance optimization. A 300-watt plate amp mounted into its own sub enclosure provides power and hi/low i/o ports allow for augmentation mode (running the Bailey from the main amp to merely fill in below the main speakers) or crossover mode (looping the Bailey between preamp and amp to remove low-frequency duties from the main speakers).
As with anything dispatched from furniture-maker Terry Cain, the Abbys and Bailey ship in solid wooden crates designed to withstand the notorious tuff of FedEx and UPS. A variety of stain finishes are available.
As I stated in my review of Nelson Pass' FirstWatt F1 amplifier, "... most wizzer-fitted full-range drivers I've heard thus far do suffer varying degrees of peakiness. Depending on the cleverness of the designer fashioning an enclosure for them, this either gets tamed down to merely suggest a certain liveliness and energy or remains troublesome especially on charged female vocals. Terry Cain's neat speaker cabinet turns the 4kHz/4dB peak of his affordable Fostex driver into something that measures far worse than it sounds... Naturally, transitioning to my $18,000 Avantgardes with active bass modules would reveal more subterranean trickery and certain wave-like surges cresting and breaking in the low 30s; and you'd occasionally hear more upper-harmonic spray; and certain drones would simply be sustained with more prominence and growling - but going back to the Abbys, you wouldn't at all feel like a bandaged cripple."
"... In fact, even challenging female vocals like Dulce Ponte's Lagrimas [BMG 74321 25787 2] -- which can quickly expose a full-range driver's Achilles heel in the lower-to-mid-treble band -- only elicited very few and transitory glimpses of isolated prominence but even then never objectionably so. Truly, as far as full-range drivers go, this Fostex unit is one smooth and extended operator. Any wizzer jokes are not on the driver but the jokster who'll be exposed as a wheezing old-timer who hasn't kept up with them new and present times. To be honest, I'm not sure whether to feel more impressed by the Abbys' treble or bass performance. At the end of the day, I'll cop out and opt for overall balance. That's really the most compelling reason for why to consider ownership of the Abbys..."
"... Nobody in their right mind expects to buy a $1,500/pr speaker that does it all. What you get with the Abby... is a surprisingly warm-sounding speaker. At non-excessive listening levels, it's not zippy or tipped-up at all but rather, meaty and gutsy. Naturally, it's dynamic -- you expect that from a zero crossover design -- but it isn't hyper-dynamic like the Third Rethm which really is a speed freak of sorts. The Abby tracks dynamic swings very well and scales instantly but doesn't exaggerate this aspect to seem unnatural. Going to the most challenging of materials --classical symphonic -- you'd be surprised by how well this single driver sorts through the thicket of massive complexity. You'd really appreciate dynamic responsiveness when the first crescendos carry the climaxes farther than expected..."
Curious how the addition of the Bailey would transform the Abby's performance, I'd requested a subwoofer loaner and today shall report on my results with this 3-piece system run from a variety of amplifiers priced such as to make natural mates: the Onix/Melody SP3 integrated, the Eastern Electric M520 and MiniMax pre/power duo, the FirstWatt F1.
The Bailey's power inlet is located so close to the amp's heat sinks that power cords terminated with round casings around their IEC plug won't fit. Standard Belden cords like the one included work fine but even my super-skinny Crystal Cable Reference don't by virtue of using a fat plastic barrel to house the connector [see below]. The closely-spaced cluster of speaker terminals on the Bailey's plate amp also means that banana-terminated wires will be the ticket for ease of connection. I built some using Radio Shack 10-gauge copper.
Hitched to Eastern Electric's new M520, the Abbys' 95dB sensitivity revealed the amp's operational noise floor to be considerably higher than my -- far more expensive -- Brazilian monos into the considerably more efficient 103dB Duos. Superior noise specs are one area where higher expense with tube electronics usually nets very real returns. Though likely inaudible from the listening seat in most spaces not as wickedly quiet as my semi-underground earth ship, the constant surf/hum between tracks did bother me a bit and prospective users of this combination should check first that they're okay with it. Be advised too that the M520's attenuator comes on quickly. Settings above 9:00 o'clock with the Abbys at a standard distance became unrealistically loud. Ultralinear somewhat diminishes amp gain but full-on pentode sounds better.
The Bailey has a bit of transformer hum but it's subdued enough to be inaudible at the listening seat. Incidentally, this powered subwoofer is also available amp-less should an owner wish to use her own bass amp [a B&O ICEpower module would be stunning] or slave multiple Baileys together. Retail for a passive Bailey takes $250 off its bill.
The inclusion of the Bailey for LF mule muscle means placement of the Abbys becomes far less critical. With them, you're no longer concerned over ultimate bass extension. Simply position them for best soundstaging and where decor considerations dictate. Then fill in bass wherever they happen to roll off in your room, using the Bailey's continuously adjustable low-pass filter (50-100Hz) in tandem with its gain pot. Serious subbers will eventually opt for two Baileys to extend stereo performance below the hand-off where one sub otherwise means a summed-to-mono signal (from ca. 60Hz on down with the Abby). However, most shopper in this price/performance range will be more than happy with one Bailey.
Owners of integrated amps likely lack pre-out/main-in loops to insert the Bailey's crossover as a bass subtractor. In my mind, that inability is a very good thing. After all, one of the major appeals of single-driver speakers is their absence of a filter network preceding the driver. Why insert a subwoofer crossover ahead of the Fostex F166E? It's not a wall flower in need of protection. Due to its high sensitivity, excursion demands at regular volumes are already minimized. The quarter-wave back-loading produces enough bass to drop the hand-over to the Bailey low enough to be acoustically seamless (although for best results and proper timing, the subwoofer should ideally be sited in the same plane as the speaker). I thus used the Bailey exclusively in augmentation mode, mostly tapping its signal from the main amp's terminals via speaker cables in parallel to the Abbys. This also transfers the main amp's sonic signature to the subwoofer amp. In my book, it's the hookup with speakers like the Abby that don't require bass subtraction for dynamic protection. I experimented with line-level hook-up with the MiniMax duo and MiniMax/F1 combo, both of which gave me the requisite second pre-out. However, I still didn't loop the Bailey but ran it in augmentation mode only.
As Nelson Pass had first pointed out to me, the Abby's bass benefits from about a half bag of Polyfill stuffed into its base through the port to add just a touch of damping. This minimizes a certain ringing or hollowness in the lower midband and upper bass generated by what could be organ pipe resonances inside the cabinet. My local Walmart sells Polyfill in the fabric department for less than $4/bag. One bag'll do to remove this minor cellulite. Selecting lower rather than higher Bailey attenuator settings and a low-pass value around 60Hz then has you all set. (The frequency selector of the Bailey starts at 50Hz in the 5:30 position and ends at 100Hz in the 7:30 position, giving amazing flexibility for fine adjustments over a narrow band.) Bumping up this low-pass value can deliberately inject added warmth and each user will season to taste.
Taste. The Abby/Bailey combo gives you a very serious taste of the single-driver phenomenon in a decorator-friendly, wallet-happy, placement-flexible package. By general comparison, network-filtered speakers sound - well, filtered. Immediacy and suchness get cut, live vitamins killed for a bit of homogenization and longevity on the shelves. Okay, this simile is bigger than the occasion warrants but you get the drift. Also, most multi-way dynamic speakers need to be goosed before they spread their wings. The Abbys wake up at 4:00AM, way early and quiet enough to let everyone else sleep undisturbed. You can goose them 'til kingdom come but at truly happy levels, they get a bit shouty and sharp, with that 4kHz peak gaining in relative prominence to stand out. But stay within a 12-or-so-feet field from them at non-headbanger levels and you'll remain in their good graces, in the heart of their benign power band before things start to get pushed and sound pushy. The Bailey's Birch Ply cabinet doesn't overdamp the bass to produce dry farts but creates a nice live bloom - well-defined and bouncy, not cyborg brutal as though emanating from a concrete bunker.
With his Bailey, Terry Cain wisely didn't opt for superlative SPLs or record-setting infrasonics but speed and precision. The 10" Seas metal-cone driver with the stout phase plug will likely telegraph limitations when asked to participate in the usual search-to-destroy spectacles of he-man subwoofer shootouts (the ones that consider THX-style levels a starting point rather than bleeding-ear insanity). But who cares. When it comes to music, the Bailey is cream. It performs just as intended. It transforms the Abby into an affordable full-range speaker with proper meat in the midbass power zone. As a single-driver device, this would otherwise necessitate some unwieldy horn monstrosity, hardly something you'd drag through the front door to romance your loved ones into audiophilia with.
The EL-34 fitted M520 in pentode mode is a bona fide tone champ but into the Abbys ultimately suffered either insufficient damping factor by way of a highish output impedance or just an overall voicing that erred on the loose and slightly fuzzy side. Though feedback can be increased -- with the former assumption predicting that more would be better -- less in this instance simply sounded better, being all about tone and romance and less about precision and articulation. On a different note, the Abby's treble attenuates noticeably off-axis. In other words, standing up turns the treble control counter clockwise. Toe-in will depend on inter-speaker and listening distance but firing straight ahead will likely diminish treble unless you sit excessively far away. Where Terry mounts his driver inside the wooden disc on the sloping baffle strategically matches the average listening height. Nothing needs to be done for serious listening except to sit ye down.
Once you do, you'll get your first glimmer of timing and that pungent quality of P.R.A.T. which our British friends coined to distinguish their sensibilities from our Yankee obsessions with B.R.A.T. (insert whatever you will but "B" surely must stand for Bigger is Better Bass). The soundstaging over the Abbys is very deep and precisely placed within the edges defined by the speaker cabinets. The Fostex driver doesn't quite exhibit the spectacular luv for vocals a well-implemented Lowther DX-55 gives off but compared to most conventional dynamic drivers, it's far ahead of the game and mimics triode presentations for its sense of one-on-one intimacy.
On Paco Ortega's soundtrack to Albacete & Menkes' movie Sobreviviré, Alba Molina sings a sevillanas accompanied simply by José Antonio Rodriguez on guitar. Singing with her heart in her throat, the Abby unravels the most minute changes in sound pressure, conveying the heaviness of her emotions, the emphatic peaks where she bares her blade, the intermediate hesitations during which the voice gets hooded and thick. No instrument is as multi-faceted as the human voice and the Abby let's you know this. Adding a bit of energy which isn't exactly factual, it's nonetheless in the service of communicativeness, probably less objectionable so because HF output of this driver begins to gradually attenuate at 8kHz and is down 5dB at 20kHz. The only drawback really is an emphasis of certain sibilants.
While conventional $1995/pr speakers will do certain things better especially in the upper-most treble (which is why the Super Abby adds an adjustable rear-firing tweeter), the Abbys rule when it comes to conveying the life and energy encoded in the music. Direct-heated single-ended triodes, direct-coupled single-ended transducers - the parallels are obvious. So are the reasons why combining the two is popular. They conform to the expectations and priorities of a particular kind of listener. He is more forgiving of deviations from measured perfection but far less so when it comes to conviction and participatory involvement. She will innocently ask who needs level-flat if it sounds so boring? By the time you add the 10" Seas Excel W26FX001 to the recipe, the Abby gains solid grounding and true bass to eliminate the Achilles' heel of the single-driver genre - a tipped-up tonal balance without foundation.
The presence of the sub anchors the upper midrange energy with solid bass weight to render it more of a spice than a detracting intrusion or annoyance. It also means you can play things louder before the prominence becomes too obvious. It also means that Trance, Ambient, Electronica and large-scale symphonica -- such as has been expertly compiled on AAD's wonderful hybrid SACD sampler The Symphonic Sound Stage [TM-SACD9004.2] -- are all fair game. Dainty SET limitations of string quartets are demolished. This is doubly true because even underendowed triode amps won't have a problem driving the Abbys. The self-powered 300-watt solid-state Bailey then kicks in where the triode amps usually lose their lunch. In many respects, this combination really gets you the best of two worlds, scaled back merely in terms of ultimate refinement and grandiose scope.
You could spend a lot more money and not get the vibrancy, color, speed and sheer fun factor of the Abby/Bailey rig. I'd rather trade a few degrees of refinement for a bit of occasional rawness if this opens the flood gates of musical energy transmission. In many ways then, these Cain & Cain devices perform well beyond their price point. I'd wager a guess that Terry sells far more Abbys than anything else - not just because they're his most affordable model but because they deliver that live charge and excitement already in such full measure that paying a lot more for a far larger box with still only a single driver might simply become a less obvious bargain.
The Onix/Melody SP3 integrated (ca. $550 when you factor that for $1,199, AV123.com sells it together with their Onix Ref1 speakers) turned out to be far quieter than the M520 and truly astonishing not merely in that regard. The sound became a lot more precise and firm but lost a skoch of warmth and that bluesy color the EL34s injected. Transient were more defined, the rhythmic fabric tauter and truly p.r.a.t.ty now. In Chip Stern's immortal scheme of aural characterizations, the M520 was comfort food or red wine, the Onix a dish served in a more upscale eatery or as a more sophisticated white wine - slightly drier, distinctly more sprightly. Resolution too went up especially towards the rear of the stage and in overall control. Whoa Nelly - this really was something to write home about. I also got a few more clicks of usable range out of the SP3's stepped resistor-ladder attenuator than the fast-acting Eastern Electric wiper.
As any resolving device should, the Abbys despite their entry-level price are fully responsive to amplifier flavors and will benefit from some care identifying the perfect mate. This needn't be costly. Mark Schifter's $999 Onix/Melody SP3 should be at the top of your list if your system doesn't exceed two sources and remote control isn't an issue. If your budget can stretch farther, the F1 with an affordable tube preamp like the MiniMax would be at the top of my list. Unless your room is small and you listen predominantly to smaller-scale acoustic fare, you should aspire to adding the Bailey to the Abbys but the appealing aspect about this is that you can do so in stages.
Though I've only heard the bigger Cain & Cain models at shows and in Josh Stippich's digs, I consider Terry's Abby his perfect bull's eye product. Its full-range driver approach doesn't attempt to wring more from the driver than it wants to with a simple yet well-executed cabinet. Its easy load behavior places no undue burden on the partnering equipment to keep total system cost well within reason and complexity to a minimum. The Bailey acknowledges the inherent limitations of the Abbys and provides an upgrade path that's fully consistent with the general design philosophy. For a reasonable price, you end up with esoteric maintenance-free audio that makes a very powerful argument in favor of forgoing ever-elusive dreams about dedicated, fully tricked-out sound rooms filled with exotic trophy HiFi. You can get more refinement and higher SPLs but you won't really get any more musical essence. That's why I'm bestowing our Blue Moon Award on this combo. It's something Listener magazine would have loved and Harvey Rosenberg would have endorsed. In what it does right, it embarrasses many far more hifalutin speakers and dishes out dynamics that usually would require horns. Where it errs, it does so in a manner that will primarily get minor marks in audiophile black books. Most music lovers will be completely oblivious to them since they don't intrude on their grooving in the zone. Call the Abby/Bailey trio Real-Fi or Family-Fi - it's a return to the heart of the hobby as well as a return to sanity and practicality.